Jessica Romero, 6, plays with a plastic car that she found in trash dumped in Sacramento County’s Lemon Hill neighborhood last month. She was a block from where a developer plans a project with affordable housing and retail businesses. • See additional images Sacramento Bee/Anne Chadwick Williams

New housing project finds county uncomfortable with cutting edge

By Cameron Jahn -- Bee Staff Writer
Published 2:15 am PDT Sunday, May 1, 2005

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Barbara Price has spent 35 years in one of Sacramento County's most impoverished neighborhoods, barricading her life behind deadbolts, barbed wire and barred windows.

Now, with Lemon Hill set to claim one of the first infill projects that adheres to Sacramento County's new affordable housing ordinance, Price hopes the infusion of development and retail business will jump-start a transformation in her neighborhood.

"I must say it's certainly got to be better than what's going on now," Price said of the gang violence, drugs and blight that have plagued her community. "All those things potentially will be eliminated by development of those properties."

It's what county officials hoped to see when they approved the state's most aggressive affordable housing policy four months ago.

But with no manual to follow - and planners across the state tuning in - it's proving difficult to turn the county's affordable housing policy into reality.

That's because, simply put, the county is set up to approve sprawling developments on vacant suburban spreads, rather than densely packed infill projects built into existing urban neighborhoods.

Near Price's home on Underwood Way, developer Martin Tuttle hopes to create a showcase for so-called "smart growth" principles with Victoria Station. As proposed, the 15-acre project would sport ground-floor retail below two stories of housing, narrow streets shaded by a canopy of trees to encourage walking, and a drainage canal transformed into a riparian corridor.

While on the cutting edge of urban design, Victoria Station defies nearly every planning tool available in the county.

"Today, it's much easier to get a conventional project done: You get the set-backs in the right place, have no parking on the street, and you breeze through the planning process," said Supervisor Roger Dickinson.

"We need to recast the county's zoning code in a way that reinforces our desire to get smart-growth rather than putting up barriers. "

Each of the design features that makes Tuttle's project distinctive - such as the narrow streets intended to mimic the appeal of big-city neighborhoods - requires special permission under county codes. That means a longer, more tedious approval process and added costs.

"Victoria Station - we should call it Victoria Stationary," said Tuttle, vice president of New Faze Development, which is seeking approval for the 143 homes and townhouses on 47th Avenue, just east of Highway 99.

"Of all the projects we have, this has been the hardest rock to move."

Bureaucratic hurdles also are slowing implementation of the county's sweeping affordable housing policy, which requires 15 percent of new units to be dedicated for the poor, including a 3 percent set-aside for those who are essentially homeless.

More than 12,000 housing units were put into a holding pattern while the Board of Supervisors spent two years debating the policy. Since then, applications for another 12,000 units have flooded in.

The county has hired extra staff to deal with the backlog, and officials say they are confident the kinks will be worked out shortly.

"It's not just that it's spring," the prime building season, said Leighann Moffit, a senior planner with the county. "There's a lot of (projects), and there's a lot of applications."

Jim Ray believes many of the slow-downs could have been avoided.

"The affordable housing ordinance was long-debated, and then, at the end of the year, it got adopted, but the implementation steps were not real well-thought-through," said Ray, a principal engineer with MacKay and Somps, a planning and engineering firm working to secure approval for the 550-lot North Vineyard Greens subdivision near Elk Grove.

"It's been very frustrating for us and probably as well for (the county)."

Dickinson has asked County Executive Terry Schutten to propose changes that would encourage infill development and smart-growth principles by year's end.

Compounding the pressure to build more densely, the county is running out of virgin land in the suburbs.

"The focus is shifting quickly, and maybe it has already shifted, because we don't have that much greenfield area left in the unincorporated area that we are going to develop," Dickinson said.

Supervisor Illa Collin said the Victoria Station project is a test case to gauge the county's interest in - and commitment to - infill projects. With much of the necessary infrastructure already in place to build housing, the entire unincorporated county is ripe for similar projects, she said.

"Victoria Station wants to do some unconventional things, and the response has been, 'Oh, oh, that's not the way we do things,'" said Collin, whose district includes the project.

"We wanted to try get some of these projects through, but if you want to see infill development, you can't have developers waiting a year or two to get their projects approved."

Even if county officials pave the way, neighborhood friction may water down efforts to incorporate such projects into older, more rural areas.

Tony Zogopoulos said he scaled back his Liberty Square development at 34th and U streets in Antelope after neighbors protested the density and configuration.

"This is a neighborhood that hasn't seen any development in years, and I come in with (a 10-units-per-acre) project, and they're shocked and don't know how to deal with it," he said.

"I think there is a responsibility on behalf of the county, as well as the developer, to educate people, because I think people initially hear the densities and just assume it will be a ghetto. They assume it will be a real terrible project, and that's not the case."

BUCKING THE CODES

Here's a list of Victoria Station's design elements that need special permission from the county:

* Eliminating the required 50-foot setback in order to build the project immediately along 47th Avenue.

* Allowing private alleyways behind the units.

* Reducing the required 20-foot driveways.

* Shrinking the requirements for front, rear and side yards in order to build more compactly.

* Allowing on-street parking and diagonal parking.

* Allowing separated sidewalks to place a landscaped buffer between pedestrians and the street.

* Reducing the number of parking spaces required for the project's ground-floor retail space.

- Cameron Jahn

About the writer:

• The Bee's Cameron Jahn can be reached at (916) 321-1038 or cjahn@sacbee.com.